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How I got wealthy without working too hard

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Re: How I got wealthy without working too hard

#201

Post by mdavis6890 »

fhd2 wrote: post #15
jcroll wrote: post #2

> Work and self-actualisation can be rewarding and meaningful, but looking at the sea from an hammock and drinking too much beer with friends three times a week is also a completely respectable way of waiting for the gravitational swallowing of the planet. Part of wants to accept this from the author and the other part of me is wary. I didn't have a child because I wanted to be happy, I did it because I wanted a more…

I can relate, I have three and I feel it does give my life more meaning. But I still feel like pointing something out: Know that phenomenon where users that paid for software are typically more satisfied with it and give better ratings than users who didn't? Whish I knew what the proper name for it is, but having kids is kind of the ultimate version of that :D (Update: Thanks so much for helping me figure out what to…

It's called "knowing yourself"

People who think "I think I will likely be happier with children" will be positively correlated with people who have children and are happy about it.

People who think "Having kids will probably make me less happy, so I won't have any." will be negatively correlated with having children, or being happy about them if they do.

This isn't irrational. It's just knowing yourself and choosing wisely.

Re: How I got wealthy without working too hard

#202

Post by jfk13 »

GDC7 wrote: post #59
asmos7 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see what good it is to own a mansion and have a bunch of toys if you live in a dangerous area where you have to put up a gate, have armed guards and in general worry about someone knocking you over the head and stealing your shit. Being the richest person in the ghetto is like being tallest midget - who cares.

And none of that happens anywhere basically (except maybe some barrios in El Salvador or Venezuela) Besides, in this world the shit is everywhere it's just the color that changes and the window dressing that makes people believe otherwise. I'd rather deal with impoverished people and deal personally with my security than some scum of Silicon Valley such as Elizabeth Holmes or Elon Musk.

Have you personally tried moving from a stable, developed country to somewhere with much lower cost of living?

I lived for some years in a "good" suburb of a pretty well-known third-world city. Everyone had security bars on the windows and razor wire (or similar) atop their walls. Many of our neighbours employed round-the-clock armed guards.

I personally witnessed a police-vs-robbers shootout (leaving at least one dead on the ground) from my office window. For a while, carrying a pillion passenger on a motorcycle was banned because it was such a popular way to do drive-by shootings.

The majority of the expatriate community I knew there had personally experienced violent crime of some form (armed break-ins, hold-ups, car-jacking, etc). So had some of my local friends, of course, though many of them were much less well-off and therefore less of a target (you can't snatch someone's car at gunpoint if they don't have one).

When disorder and violence is that pervasive in a society, it can be pretty hard to live with.

But many aspects of the cost of living were indeed lower.

Re: How I got wealthy without working too hard

#203

Post by nickpp »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #138
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

> Take a $ 500-1000 / day, full-remote job > Take 2 months for holidays in-between contracts > Do this for 7 years while investing most of your salary in a diversified portfolio. Working $1000/day contracts for 5 days per week, 10 months per year is equivalent to $217K of contractor income per year. But contractor income is not comparable to normal career income because you have to handle additional taxes and health…

> Working a $150K job for 7 years isn’t really a recipe for getting “wealthy” It definitely is if you live in a LCOL area of an EU country. The author mentions he's Italian. So he gets health care and shit for free while being based in a country where it's very easy to live cheaply if you stay out of the big cities. Definitely possible to save a ton of money while living well in those conditions.

> he gets health care and shit for free

Not free - he's (probably) paying taxes on that remote income, and the maximal rate is rather high in those "shit for free" countries.

Re: How I got wealthy without working too hard

#204

Post by Xenoamorphous »

nzach wrote: post #85
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #23

I've done most of this. 10+ years ago I started working for a company in a city with good salaries (for Europe, not so much for the US), London. After a while I decided to go back to my home country, and the company offered me to work remotely. I've lived in my hometown for most of the past 9 years or so, a small town in southern Europe, much cheaper than London and any other big city, including the ones in my countr…

>if you stick long enough so that your knowledge is very valuable, the raises will keep coming AKA golden handcuffs. I don't think this is something inherently bad but we should always be aware of it.

Indeed. I'm in a golden cage right now. No one would pay me as much, which makes switching jobs hard to swallow.

Re: How I got wealthy without working too hard

#206

Post by dlisboa »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #167

Do people here like working? That's a thing that often seems missing from these wealth optimization conversations. I love working. I don't love working all day. But I got into programming because I love programming and then I found that I also love what I can build through programming and what people do with the things I build. I spent a lot of my career leveling up my situation so that it was more of doing those thi…

That's indeed what's missing: I enjoy what I do. Not sure if "work" is what I enjoy, but the challenges I face in software development. If I was a millionaire I'd still find time to program. I'd do Open Source and just learn new things for the hell of it, without pressure or deadline, but I wouldn't sit on my ass on the beach all day. And I love the beach.

Honestly, I'm kinda good at this, at least more so than I am at anything else in my life. That alone gives me some sense of purpose. "Being a millionaire" is not a purpose.

Re: How I got wealthy without working too hard

#207

Post by demygale »

gcheong wrote: post #189
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s quite a cop-out for a blog post that contains a lot of specific, actionable steps.

I think the qualification is necessary. Even Warren Buffet admits that he got rich in a very specific way using skills that would be all but useless in any other context but him winning the "ovarian lottery". https://www.sloww.co/ovarian-lottery/

From the link: Buffett says, "I didn’t get money from my parents, and I really didn’t want it."

Which kind of elides the fact that his father was a sitting US Congressman. Investors were willing to give large sums of money to a man in his early twenties so he could flip manufacturing firms. Ovarian lottery doesn't quite cover it.

Re: How I got wealthy without working too hard

#209

Post by nostrademons »

marktangotango wrote: post #110
jacobmischka wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely can and will call $1M wealthy. Anyone who thinks it isn't is absolutely living in a bubble.

I once shared this outlook, but when one considers their own ideas about the lifestyle "wealthy" entails, and run some numbers, specifically determine the annual spend for that lifestyle, one will quickly realize the truth. A million can be blown in a year, or SWR'd (safe withdrawal rate) at $40k a year indefinitely. Can you retire on $40k a year? Would you want that level of income and lifestyle? Of course this depe…

$40K is more than the median personal income in the U.S ($35K as of 2019). Plenty of people would consider $40K/year without having to work wealthy.

Even in VHCOL areas, $40K/year is fine if you own your own home and your kids are out of childcare years. VHCOL areas are typically VHCOL because of housing prices and their effect on service-provider wagss. If you take them out of the equation and only need to pay for food, gas, entertainment, utilities, insurance, and depreciation on your car, $40K/year (= $3.3K/month) is plenty.

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